Sep. 24—Two of Maine’s poorest and most rural counties will need to increase their housing production at a rate far higher than the rest of the state in order to reach a set of housing goals outlined in a state report released Tuesday.
Washington County, which currently only issues about 60 building permits a year, will need to issue 830 permits annually by 2030 — a 1,283% increase — to remedy historic underproduction and meet the expected population growth.
Aroostook County, which currently issues about 90 permits each year, will need to increase that number by more than 300%, to 390 per year.
MaineHousing estimated last fall that the state is short about 84,000 homes and that the total housing stock — not just the number of new homes being built — needs to increase by about 11% in five years in order to alleviate the existing housing crisis and make room for all the people needed to bolster the declining workforce.
The new report published Tuesday, comes at the behest of the state Legislature as part of L.D. 2003, a landmark law passed in 2022 that, among other changes, requires municipalities to allow accessory dwelling units on any property zoned for residential use.
The law directed the Department of Economic and Community Development and MaineHousing to establish statewide and regional housing production goals.
To establish the goals, officials needed to determine the scope of the problem, which last year’s housing production needs study aimed to do.
Tuesday’s report is the next step in the process — it outlines the housing goals by county and includes suggestions for how to achieve them, but stops short of issuing any mandates.
WHAT DO WE NEED?
Statewide, housing production needs to increase 92% — starting with 5% in 2025, an additional 10% in 2026 and then an additional 15% in each of the following four years until the 16 counties are pushing out about 13,300 building permits in 2030 to reach the targeted 84,300 units.
The housing goals create a target for the number of units but officials did not suggest an ideal split for housing costs — how many units should be market rate, workforce or affordable.
Both studies emphasized the need for affordable housing production “because low- and moderate-income households are more constrained in their housing choices and are more likely to pay more than they can afford for a home,” but also acknowledged that “the creation of any type of housing, including market-rate housing, contributes to reaching the state’s production goals.”
Cumberland and York counties need far more houses than any other in the state — a total of 18,800 and 16,600 units, respectively — but the year-over-year increase is substantially less dramatic. Cumberland County issues about 1,880 building permits each year. According to the report, that needs to increase by just 5% in 2025, and then hold steady at 1,920 additional units each year.
In York County, which issues about 1,520 building permits, production needs to increase in 5% increments each year until 2028 and then maintain a pace of 1,850 permits for the remaining three years.
Kristina Egan, executive director of the Greater Portland Council of Governments, said it was encouraging to see that the Greater Portland communities have been receptive to more housing and that they seem to be on the right track.
“(But) there’s still a way to go for us to build the housing that’s needed for our workforce,” she said. “Growth and development is a complicated issue for communities to grapple with because it’s about change … it takes time.”
WHAT DO WE DO?
So how does a state build 84,000 homes in five years?
The report includes a long list of suggestions — including infrastructure improvements, increased state and federal funding for affordable housing development and simplified building and landuse regulations at the state and municipal level — but does not require any changes or direct money to any particular solutions.
Other suggestions included education and awareness campaigns to shift attitudes about affordable housing to reduce local pushback — or Not-in-My-Backyard (NIMBY) arguments — which can delay or even stop projects from moving forward.
“Often this opposition is based on stereotypes about the type of people that will be living in the housing and changing the character of the existing neighborhood,” the report said.
GPCOG is trying to collect data surrounding new development to help answer questions about the impacts on traffic, school enrollment, property taxes and neighborhood feel.
“I think that’s really important,” Egan said. “Then the conversation at the community level becomes more fact-based than fear-based.”
The report also suggested tapping into the community college system, technical education programs and apprenticeships to help build the waning construction and contractor sectors, while also incentivizing alternative construction methods like modular and manufactured housing, which can be built quickly and more affordably and create more state manufacturing jobs.
For people already in the industry, or who might be interested in development, there needs to be more education and networking to teach people about the opportunities in areas like Northern Maine, which currently lack the development capacity to build at the rate they need.
Kristen Henry wasn’t surprised that Washington and Aroostook counties need to increase production so dramatically — and she also wasn’t worried about it.
“I think that it is an ambitious but achievable goal,” said Henry, project manager and community development specialist for the Northern Maine Development Commission, an economic development engine for both counties.
“Historically, we’ve been regionally secluded,” she said, so their growth has lagged behind more populated counties.
Washington and Aroostook counties are also two of the poorest in Maine, with around 18% and 15% of the population living below the poverty level, respectively.
But recently there’s been an uptick in interest in Northern Maine and as new businesses have set up shop the need — and urgency — for more housing has come to a head.
Efforts in Washington and Aroostook counties to find solutions have been growing over the last few years, she said.
“It’s imperative that we meet these housing production goals,” Henry said.
WHAT’S NEXT?
While the state is now armed with goals and ideas for how to reach them, officials don’t have a strong way to track progress.
According to the report, the state needs to invest in a standardized method to collect building permits, occupancy certificates and demolition data.
Currently, housing production data is tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau, which compiles data voluntarily submitted by municipalities.
“Without a standardized method for collecting more reliable and comprehensive data, tracking housing production will continue to be highly imprecise,” the report said.
This fall and winter, state officials will work with HR&A Advisors, the group that conducted the 2023 housing needs study, to explore production tracking and financing methods, get a better understanding of production challenges and opportunities and develop workforce development strategies to help achieve the goals.
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Publish date : 2024-09-24 11:48:00
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